(NOTE: This opinions expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of DerpySquad, Spazz, Marimo, or Sprocket.) When asked about potential challenges in marketing MLP as… (More)

DN on Social Media

“Paris is no more. The legendary city of lights has been extinguished forever as a massive…” – Kent Brockman

It seems the now long running RainbowDash Network is shutting down. Appearing today in the top right corner is notice from site owner Cabal on the termination of the site and an alternative location for its users to relocate to (www.equestriacoffeehouse.com).

This is due to the withdraw of community member Purple Tinker who had a major part in the RDN operations. She has recently been involved in controversy involving the internal operations of Bronycon and has decided to leave the fandom for good. Along with RDN, it has been noted that PT did deactivate her Deviantart account. (And then suddenly its all back on again). We will have more about the Bronycon issues later this week.

Update: It seems that Purple Tinker was unaware of the shutdown, as this was mostly Cabal’s choice. According to their accounts on RDN (namely Cabal), he is in talk with PT about the future of the site. From the sounds of it, its a money issue.

Cabal via RDN: Okay, everypony. @purpletinker and I are currently discussing the future of the site. As far as I know we are not going down at this time. Remain calm. This is practically a cornorstone of the fandom that needs not shutdown, but new leadership (ie, has money to blow).

Seems a deal will be striked and the RD network will live on. As for a few comments that I was misinformed, I got the screencaps to prove it. End of rine.

I’m a little upset to hear this. I know some people had issues with her but she shouldn’t let that upset her enough to leave the fandom. I know a lot of people here that hate my guts but I still love and tolerate with the best of them. I hope she reconsiders since she was the mother of the convention scene for bronies.

Also, the allegedly “racist” comment I made is only “racist” if the NYPD constitute a “race”. I was pointing out that NYPD hates trans people (example), much like how they hate black people (example). If that’s racist, then I guess the NYPD is a race (which would really be frightening, actually).

Shut up, man. No one deserves to be called a “cancer” in any fandom. No one deserves that accusation at all, unless they’ve actually done something to deserve it, and I haven’t seen some evidence that says so.

Derpestia

Oh you :3

But honestly man if even a part of what they say he did is true then yeah better off if he just ignored the fandom all together.

Anonymous

Is there nothing she can’t screw up? I’m kind of surprised this hasn’t happened earlier. Hopefully she’ll leave the site to Cabal.

Purple Tinker

Evidently, you cannot read. Cabal is the one who wanted to shut the site down. I want to have it turned over to someone else– not Cabal, and not myself.

Anonymous

No, it sounds like he thought he had to shut down because you were withdrawing. Why would he think that, huh?

Purple Tinker

I’m withdrawing from running RainbowDash.net. I didn’t tell Cabal to shut down the site. He jumped straight to that conclusion on his own.

Anonymous

Well, he’s silly then. Good luck to you.

Purple Tinker

Cabal is definitely a silly pony. Nice guy tho.

Anonymous

Purple Tinker, since I know you read these comments, I just wanted to say that I, and I’m sure most other fans *do* appreciate the good you’ve done for the community. Of course, that doesn’t excuse the bad stuff. But you got the ball rolling on a lot of early fandom community projects, and even if the stress did end up bringing out the worst of you, as you said in your DA journal, we still appreciate the positive work you’ve done.

Hopefully the whole thing has been a good learning experience, if nothing else…

Rainbowdash.net requires a large amount of memory and bandwidth to handle all the posters and lurkers that call up the site, which is a very sizable amount that requires scalable space. Simple cloud hosting is not enough, so a customized space is needed (ie, I throw EXORBITANT amounts of money running a social networking site).

The other issue is that I am not a programmer. The software StatusNet is pretty much crap, and hard to put together. I can make a wiki in a heartbeat, but cant handle statusnet because the devs didn’t follow a basic rule: Keep It Simple Stupid (kiss). You should see the logs we generate from errors that are meaningless to me.

We also face other threats, but I have been pretty good at keeping an eye on them. But since starting my new job that’s 30+ miles away from my house I have been trying to cut back on expenses so I can move closer. RBDN is a unnecessary expense at this point in time, and can’t afford the bill. I am looking into getting the site transferred to some competent people. And I am currently looking at my options.

Don’t worry, the site isn’t going to disappear. But it will happen if nothing is done.

LetsGo

Yes! I am so happy to see that the cesspit of hypocrisy laden hell is in trouble, I really hope that RainbowDash.net dies a terribly painful death, it is nothing less than the pathetic staff that blight its dark existence deserve.

It may have been given a reprieve but I’m sure no one will want to keep that waste of space around for that long.